Cast Down The Heretic

Round 75 of the Articles Of Excellence ends with Alyssa scoring another win, this time with her review of Heavenly Sword. She prefaces the review by saying how it was ignored due to being released at the wrong time, and explains that if it was released under different circumstances, it would immediately be a classic, perhaps outside of some gimmicky motion controls. But hey, if you have excellent combat, a fantastic story and surprisingly good animation, it's very easy to overlook the motion controls.

Heavenly Sword Score: 9/10
Genre: Hack and Slash
With a dynamic cast of characters and intense battles, it's hard to deny that Heavenly Sword is definitely one of the finest games in this generation.

quote Alyssa

Damn, 2007 was a gooood year. Before the seventh generation became little more than corporate greed and generic faceless crap, there were a bunch of games that could give a lot of

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Round 74 of the Articles Of Excellence ended a bit later than usual, but Gryzor was in hospital between Monday and Friday so he couldn't make the AOE deadline. So sorry about that. But enough of that, because he has a review to make the winner, and this period's winner is none other than Demonfurby's review of Bioshock Infinite. He describes it as one of the finest games ever made, and for a game made in the year 2013 to accomplish this, it's definitely something to consider.

Bioshock Infinite Score: 10/10
Genre: First Person Shooter
Please buy it, support Irrational. Support a change for the better. For the betterment of the genre, and industry as a whole.

quote Demonfurby

Wow.

That's all I was thinking after completing Irrational's latest masterpiece, BioShock Infinite. My mind was officially blown. Not because of the immense atmosphere, juxtaposed by the highs of the soaring, majestic

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Round 73 of the Articles Of Excellence ends with Gryzor giving the reboot of the Devil May Cry franchise some kind words, giving kudos to the parts that work really well, but add a cruel tinge towards parts where it fails. He describes this reboot as one with excellent art design and a great combat engine, but a poor story and underwhelming enemies and bosses to utilize such a good combat engine on.

DmC - Devil May Cry Score: 6/10
Genre: Hack and Slash
It's not so much the hype that let me down, as much as it was the potential to be a fantastic game because if they followed through with their designs a lot better, the 8s and 9s and even Tameem's boasting would be justified, but as is... it's worth a rental, but nothing more.

quote Gryzor

The one thing that captures the attention of any potential buyer is what's on the box. As much as people bang on about looking up reviews and trailers,

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Round 72 of the Articles Of Excellence ends with Monterey Jack coming back from a short hiatus to take the circuit by storm with his review of Okami! Describing it as being on par with nature itself, he explores its deep artistic appeal while at least keeping you on Earth by pointing out some flaws here and there while explaining how everything adds to a fantastic experience.

Okami Score: 9/10
Genre: Adventure
That's the beauty of Okami – nature, like how you're restoring nature back to the way it looked instead of having all of this artificial darkness, or how you'd naturally use the different Celestial Brush techniques in order to solve various puzzles in dungeons.

quote Monterey Jack

I've stated this in a previous review, but allow me to reiterate the fact that I'm not a believer of the whole “video games are art” thing. They've always been something that you do to kill a couple of h

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Round 71 of the Articles Of Excellence ends with Praetorian Lord travelling back to the glorious year of 2007 when the seventh generation still had great ideas to expand the medium of gaming. He describes it as a game with excellent ideas with hit and miss execution.

Assassin's Creed Score: 7.5/10
Genre: Stealth
The chance to rampage around the medieval Middle East is perhaps even more enjoyable than being one of history’s greatest assassins.

quote Praetorian_Lord

When you look back at the relatively harmless video games of the ‘70s and ‘80s, you wonder how killing has become the indispensable ingredient of AAA titles. Gamers have become so desensitised to blood and gore that none of us batted an eyelid in 2007 when Ubisoft’s new IP had us playing as a medieval, professional murderer. Indeed it speaks volumes about the appeal of animated slaughter that six years, seven titles and some 3

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Round 70 of the Articles Of Excellence ends with Alyssa delivering what would appear to be a dishonorable review of the smash hit, Dishonored. She describes it as a game that lacks a good and compelling narrative with some haphazard stealth elements in what is primarily a stealth game and graphics uglier than Quasimodo. There is some silver lining - it is at least fun to kill people with Corvo's special powers, although when a game advertises itself as something, wouldn't you theoretically want to get that right? That's what made Alyssa not like the game as much as the critics did.

Dishonored Score: 6.5/10
Genre: Stealth
With no real incentive to sneak around outside of some forced moral elements, it's more appealing to play as Corvo the powerful sorcerer, master of the universe, and son of god.

quote Alyssa

Despite what any paid reviewer will tell you, the stealth genre is practically

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Taking aside Ninja Theory's increasing amount of arrogance (which boils down to "if you don't like this game, then you're a clinically depressed misanthropic jobless friendless unloved sack of shit, your mother's a whore and your dad has a herniate ballsack"), this really isn't a great game or even a good one for that matter. Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but nothing about this game even remotely lived up to Ninja Theory's claims. It takes Heavenly Sword's battle engine (swift weapon, medium weapon and slow, strong weapon), adds two different chains and tries to be all edgy and whatnot. Surprisingly though, the combat isn't half bad. When it gives you the opportunity to combine all three of your weapons to make a super combo of sorts, it's a ton of fun. When it arbitrarily limits you to a certain weapon (and at times, it really loves to do this), it feels like a homeless man's God Of W
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#16 - The Warriors

The idea of doing a licensed game is very common, but what about doing one based on a movie that's older than most Playstation 2/Xbox owners? It's a bit out of left field, but it's a risk that worked so *bleep*ing well, I not only played through this game, but also bought the movie and watched it to see how faithful it was. Yep, even when I was about 13, I gave a *bleep* about this kind of shit. You know what, this game was about as authentic as it gets. It was gritty and felt like you were in the streets with these warring street gangs back in the 1970s. You'll not only fight other street gangs, but you'll also be required to tag parts of town and steal shit in order to get money to stay alive.

Besides atmosphere, the part where The Warriors *bleep*s your shit up is in the combat. While it mostly feels like a traditional beat em up ala God Hand, The Warriors' combat has
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Round 69 of the Articles Of Excellence unfortunately doesn't end with a hentai game review, although the bafflingly attractive Polarity was the one to snag the win, so deal with it. Anyway, his review of Sleeping Dogs was what netted him the win. He describes the game as one that nails the underground cop in a triad gang aesthetic with a portrayal of Hong Kong as a city that never sleeps with some very well executed hand to hand combat to boot.

Sleeping Dogs Score: 8/10
Genre: Sandbox
Sleeping Dogs is a game that knows exactly what it wants and gives you what it knows you want

quote Polarity

What was once the third instalment in the True Crime series, Sleeping Dogs is like a breath of fresh air in the sea of banality that is the summer of 2012's video gaming line up. Even when that's not considered, Sleeping Dogs is a game that knows exactly what it wants and gives you what it knows you

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#17 - Psychonauts

Psychonauts is just brilliant and I feel that a lot of platformers could learn a lot from this game. A lot of platformers at the time (well, really, any and all besides Jak 3 and the first four Ratchet & Clank games) were pretty *bleep*ing mediocre and only served to remind us of an increasingly stagnant genre that wasn't even in that high a demand anymore. Then came Psychonauts and my balls were blown off by how out there it was, not just in the fact that the story was insane and the humorous stuff was actually funny, but also the fact that the levels were all very, very well designed, each with their own personality. Then again, that ought to be the case as they, more or less, take place inside the minds of other people! But no, even from a technical standpoint, the levels are brilliantly designed. Just about everything implemented in each of the levels complimented on
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